


A Final Goodbye

by LauraEMoriarty



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 17:56:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5711707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LauraEMoriarty/pseuds/LauraEMoriarty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the MEFW Secret Santa 2015.</p>
<p>He watches her go, and then turns his attention to the Turians holding the line. He wishes he had told her that he would follow her into the Turian hell, and back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Final Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Europolarist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Europolarist/gifts).



That last kiss. A final, desperate pressing of two pairs of lips.

“Forgive the insubordination, but your boyfriend has an order for you... Come back alive. It'd be an awfully empty galaxy without you” he told her, and she simply smiled and kissed him. Neither of them could know that it would be the last time they would hold one another, the last time they would ever see the other alive.

He watches her go, and then turns his attention to the Turians holding the line. He wishes he had told her that he would follow her into the Turian hell, and back. Garrus wishes more than anything that he had gone with her, but he knows as well as she does that it’s one battle he can’t participate in. “Hold the line!” Garrus hears himself say, rushing ahead to shoot a Cannibal, aiming and firing. He watches her through his sniper rifle’s scope, watching her as she fires again, a volley of shots at a Marauder.

Somewhere in the chaos of battle, she turns around, and Garrus’s heart leaps. He thinks, for a mad, ludicrous moment, that she has given up, but that hope is quickly shattered as she wipes her face with her sleeve, and continues the charge. Then he sees the thing he knows will haunt him the rest of his years: the beam.

Shepard feels her heart breaking over and over again as she moves towards the beam. Her last kiss with Garrus, knowing that whatever comes next, she is certain she will die. Tears fill her eyes as she looks ahead. She knows that it’s going to end in death, she knows with absolute certainty and a deadly calm comes over her. She reaches for her gun, shooting a Marauder with cold and considered aim.

She reaches the beam with seconds to spare, and then she is standing in the keeper tunnels. She hears Anderson’s voice asking where she is over her comms, and knows that her life, her legacy, will be forgotten in the years to come. She knows now that whatever comes next, that it’s all inconsequential.

Garrus stands looking at the rubble falling from the sky. He runs his talons over his head, an uncharacteristic move for him, but he cannot believe the Reapers have gone. Gone, never to return again. He knows now that Shepard will not return, despite his order to her. He knows she could never go against what she had to do, what she felt she was destined to.

Their last kiss was just that: their last.


End file.
